RIM rebrands itself as ‘BlackBerry’, announces BlackBerry 10

RIM announced today that the company would, beginning today, be branded as BlackBerry to make things more simple and to be known as one recognizable brand. The company’s buildings appear to have already undergone the aforementioned transition.

As part of the move, the Company will now trade as “BB” on the Toronto Stock Exchange and “BBRY” on the NASDAQ. The changes to the company’s ticker symbols will be effective at the start of trading on Monday, February 4, 2013.

In addition, the new BlackBerry 10 OS has been made official. It’s a complete overhaul of the previous versions of BlackBerry OS and is based off of QNX. While there are still an abundance of design elements similar to BlackBerry OS 7 and earlier, the update is an entire refresh and step up. BlackBerry 10 brings to the table a new home screen experience, a new multitasking experience, BlackBerry Hub, a new touchscreen keyboard, voice search/recognition, gestures, new BBM features like video chatting, and more.